Sprint's weird Frobinson framily tries to sell the public on its Framily plan

Sprint has done well with its framily plan. Starting at $55 a month for unlimited talk, text and 1GB of data, you can knock $5 off the base rate for each person you bring into the plan, up to $30. You are allowed ten people on the plan, but the lowest your rate can go to is $25 a month. If you want unlimited data, add $20, and Sprint will also allow you to trade-in your phone for a new one after one year.

While Sprint has been advertising the plan since it was first available, lately the nation's third largest carrier has gone off the rails with its marketing scheme. The carrier wants you to Meet the Frobinson framily. This is a framily led by the Dad, who is a hamster. We don't even want to think about what goes on in the bed room.

The rest of the family is just as weird. A daughter, continuously shadowed by a trio of animated birds, speaks only in French. And don't forget the hillbilly son. Can this collection of weirdos sell the public on Sprint's plan?

T-Mobiles old pricing was phenomenal. If all 5 users had unlimited data, it would be $210/5= $42 per line. Now dependent on each persons discount, for me it's 12% off, so it's $5.04 off per line.. so $39.96 per line if all lines are unlimited. Now though it's $260/5=$52, with no discounts available. Lucky for me though, I'm grandfathered into their unlimited at the old price, with my discount. Still, the pricing is reasonable. Consider Verizon's old pricing for unlimited data, Which was $30 on top of the $10 line access fee. I know their old 700 min plan was $70.. so $70+50 (line accesses)+150 (all lines unlimited) would come out at $270 (but you also can apply discount). I don't know about Sprint's plan, but the way you made it sound, your discount only applies to the data? You mentioned instead of $20, it's $16.4, but what about the $35? I ask because I know with T-Mobile, my discount applies to EVERYTHING. It applies to all the lines on my account, it applies to any data any line may want to add, it applies to options such as $10-15 for calling abroad (texting abroad is now free), etc. I guess this could be why the stopped doing it cuz it was cutting into profits way too much and there was no way to just limit where the discount is applied since the data/min/text are pretty much tied to each other. Regardless though, anyone who joins my line uses their new pricing but since I'm grandfathered with my discount, my discount will apply to them now!

Ok, so I just looked on the Sprint website, and it's the same thing as T-Mobile.. I don't know where you got that nonsense from. There's 2 options, bring your own phone, or finance a new phone purchase for 24 months.. which is EIP. In T-Mobile you only pay EIP if you're making payments on your phone. And if you're talking about contracts on Sprint, if you spend $250 for a phone ($200+tax+upgrade fee) and if you upgrade once every 2 years, you're still paying essentially $10.40 per month. If you split that $250 over 1 year instead, it's now around $21 extra per month.

That's perfectly fine, but it still doesn't match the value of what T-Mo offers. People here forget to calculate the few added features that Sprint offers at a premium that T-Mo offers for free, such as unlimited texting abroad, which comes standard with T-Mo but Sprint charges a extra $10 for. Having your own bill is nice, but it doesn't outweigh all the extras T-Mo throws in.

Bernoulli, that's not true at all. While you can purchase a subsidized device, Sprint charges a $15 fee if you're on the Framily plan unless you pick installment billing. They want to push IBs for everybody, so generally when you start a Framily plan with Sprint, they'll be pushing that from the first to the last minute. So you've got the potential to have a low bill but you've always got to add the monthly price of the device, unless bringing your own.

The commercials are loosely based on SoftBank's "Outo-san" commercials, where the Dad is a dog and the son is black. They also on occasion feature Quentin Terintino and Tommy Lee Jones. Seriously. Search Youtube for Softbank

These types of commercials work in Japan but so do movies like Ringu, because there is no rhyme or reason for why these types of people (A haunted TV girl, a dad as a dog) exist, and in Japan they just take things for what it is without explanation...but in America, weird personification of animals and strange talking pets and general uncomfortableness freaks people out. These commercials have done nothing but show me and my friends that Sprint is getting farther and farther out of touch with people than winning them back.

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